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The tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and green beans in
my vegetable garden are in bloom, and I’m excited. It won’t be
long before my family’s meals will consist primarily of garden-fresh
produce.
In recent weeks my children have enjoyed eating sugar
snap peas fresh from the plant. Soon they will be just as excited to pick
and eat green beans. This year we planted green bush beans and purple bush
beans in our garden. Why purple? We wanted to see what they taste like.
Royal Burgundy bush beans produce a beautiful
dark-green plant with a purplish tinge on the stem and petioles. Even the
flowers are purple. The dark-purple pods can be used raw to add color to
salads, steamed, or cooked. (Unfortunately, when cooked the pods turn
green.) Other purple bean cultivars include Royalty Purple and Purple
Queen. A tender warm-season vegetable, beans should be
planted after there’s no danger of frost. To ensure a continuous
supply, plant seeds every two to four weeks until early August. Depending
on the variety, beans mature in 50 to 65 days. Beans are available in green, yellow, purple, Romano,
runner, and lima varieties and come in two types, bush and pole. Pole bean
plants climb supports and are easily harvested. Bush bean plants —
more popular because they require less work — stand without support. Common problems of bean plants include bean leaf
beetles, bean mosaic diseases, and bacterial bean blight. Other diseases
include anthracnose, rust, and white mold. Bean leaf beetles chew holes in the leaves and
sometimes eat the pods. Unless more than 20 percent of foliage is eaten,
though, don’t worry about the harvest. Bean mosaic disease turns plants yellowish green and
cuts the production of pods. The leaves on infected plants are a mottled
yellow. Signs of bacterial bean blight include bright-yellow
or brown spots on leaves or water-soaked spots on pods. Bacterial bean
blight is best controlled by practicing three-year crop rotation, buying
seeds from a reputable dealer, avoiding work among wet plants, and removing
all bean debris from the garden. Harvest beans when the pods are firm, crisp, and
fully elongated. The length of the pod depends on the cultivar, but most
are harvested when 5 or 6 inches long. Be sure to harvest beans before the
seeds within the pod develop significantly — before you see the seed
bulge. Make sure to pick beans when the plants are dry; picking when
they’re wet can spread disease.
You can store fresh unwashed bean pods in plastic
bags in the crisper of your refrigerator for as long as three days. Just
before using them, wash the beans in cold water. Only the stem end needs to
be removed. Serve beans raw or cooked. To retain the most nutritional
value, cooking time should be brief. An excess of green beans can be frozen, dried, or
canned. For more information, go to the Web site of the University of
Georgia’s National Center for Home Food Preservation,
www.uga.edu/nchfp. It’s not too late to plant green-bean seeds, or
you can get garden-fresh beans at your local farmers’ market. The
University of Illinois Extension’s “Watch Your Garden
Grow” Web page, www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/veggies, has more information
on growing and harvesting beans, plus recipes. • Do you find that your flower gardens just
aren’t as flashy in late summer and fall as they were in May and
June? A fall-blooming garden is easy to plan once you know what will be
blooming in the heat of August through September. Learn what to plant at a
seminar hosted by Martha Smith, a horticulture educator with the U of I
Extension. “Late Summer and Fall Blooming Perennials” is
offered at 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 8, and again at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 10.
The program will be held at the Extension Building, on the state
fairgrounds. Call 217-782-4617 or register online at
www.extension.uiuc.edu/sangamonmenard. The cost is $2.
Jennifer Fishburn is a horticulture educator with the
University of Illinois Extension Sangamon-Menard Unit. Contact her at
fishburn@uiuc.edu.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2008.
